Digital Discipleship: Transforming Ministry Through Technology

Posts tagged ‘Prayer’

So here are 8 Suggestions for using a WordCloud in your religion classroom:

Paste a Gospel Reading from the USCCB website into your Word Cloud tool. You may wish to turn off common words. Discuss the phrases or words that are important in this reading.

Post students first names to create a Word Cloud of those who are part of your class.

Students create a Word Cloud for the life of a specific saint or Scripture personality.

Make a Word Cloud of certain Scripture events – e.g., Birth of Jesus, Jesus Lost in the Temple, etc. Then exchange the Word Cloud with another group and invite the group to identify the story.

Pick the same story in Scripture as told by Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John (e.g., Parable of the Lost Sheep (Matthew and Luke ) and create two different Word Clouds. Invite students to discuss what is unique to each storyteller.

Make a Word Cloud of lyrics of your favorite Christian song.

Have students create a Word Cloud using their favorite Bible Passage. They then present their Word Cloud to the class and invite students to guess the passage.

Show a Video. Then invite groups of three to five students to identify words or phrases that are important to this video. Have students create a Word Cloud using their words or phrases. Discuss the similarities and differences between the various word clouds created by each group.

You may want to look at a previous blog article WordClouds and Prayer for suggestions to use a WordCloud in prayer.

I have a feeling that my readers have some other suggestions. I invite you to add your suggestions in the “comment” section of this blog.

If you like the word arrangement as it is great! If not, you can adjust text, colors or word arrangement by clicking on menu bar text “Font”, “Layout”, or “Color”. When you like your arrangement, then do a and paste into MS Paint or any other graphic program you may have to create a *.jpg file. You may want to crop your image so that you are just showing the Wordle!

Here are examples of how you can adjust your Wordle Design

Once the JPEG file is created, then you could invite your students to do the following:

Ask them to email the graphic to you. Once you have the files you can add them to your class website or create a collage of Wordle Prayers.

Add the images to a class prayer PowerPoint. With an Advent song playing in the background show the Wordle Prayer images. Invite your students to identify ONE word on each slide that stands out for them. You may want to have a worksheet for them.

Then ask the students to create a SHORT Advent prayer using any five words they have identified.

For example: Advent, Jesus, longing, brother, darkness

Brief prayer – Jesus this Advent we are experiencing darkness, we are longing for you to be our brother.

If you are not sure how to do the “tech” part of this prayer experience, remember that many of your high school students are very comfortable with these tools, you may want to ask one of the high school students to work with you to create the PPT, or add the images to the class website, or whatever else you may want to do. Remember, they love to be your coach so that you can learn how to use these technology tools.

If you have other ways that you are planning on using Wordle with your students during this Advent season, we’d love to hear about them. If this was helpful to you, please click the “Like” button.

For those who are members of the Digital Catechesis Network when you search the video collection with the “prayer” tag you will find wonderful resources that can enhance your prayer experiences.

A few of these videos are:

Many of these resources are on YouTube. I would encourage you to search YouTube for the gems that would be a wonderful addition to your prayer experiences. Together let’s explore and find the videos that we can use to enhance our prayer experiences.

If you would like to join Digital Catechesis, please click on the link and click on the join button. You will be able to locate videos that others have found to be of value to them or you can add your wonderful find to the group.

There are many wonderful videos on the YouTube network, that are FREE. Even if you do not have the equipment that you need to display them in your classroom, you may email the link to your students and families via an email or embed in a blog post or who knows what other options you have! You can use these videos to enhance what you are doing in Faith Formation with your students, youth, and families.

If you like this post, take a moment to click on the LIKE button below.

At the 2011 Catechetical Ministry Day for the Diocese of St. Augustine, I was invited to do a workshop titled “Praying with Technology.” I must admit that as I began to develop the workshop, I was not sure what I would include in the presentation.

The insight I gained is that tools have always been used in prayer. Tools like parchment to record our Sacred Scriptures with the psalms and words of Jesus as he prayed and more. The printing press allowed us to create a variety of prayer resources. We often use a pen or a pencil to record the prayers that we want to share with others.

In today’s digital culture, we now have different tools to use. To name a few: laptop or desktop computers, iPads and tablets, iPods and MP3 Players, a Blog, a Wiki and more Web 2.0 tools than you may be aware of.

In this post I want to focus on Word Clouds. There are several web services that allow you to create a word cloud. My three favorites are:

Let’s just take the words of the Our Father and create a word cloud with them.

Our Father Wordle Cloud

ABCYD Our Father Word Cloud

Tagxedo Our Father Word Cloud

You ask – So how could I use a “Word Cloud” with my students? Following are a couple of suggestions. I encourage you to reflect on how you might use a “Word Cloud” with your class, RCIA members, youth groups, and any group you are involved with catechetical ministry.

Suggestions:

Create a word cloud with one of the word cloud tools. These services usually allow you to embed the code into your blog, or forward a link to others via e-mail, or you just may want to save the graphic image of this word cloud to use in a PPT presentation. You’ll notice in the graphics I’ve included that there are key words that stand out. Perhaps the students could guess what prayer this word cloud represents. Add the Our Father word cloud in a PowerPoint guided prayer at the point where you would say the Our Father. When they see the prayer cloud, they would – in this case – say the Our Father together.

Invite your students to go home and create a Word Cloud using the week’s assigned prayer that they are learning this week. Then direct them to come to the Class Wiki. They can “embed” the code of this graphic on their page and in 50 to 100 words, they can respond to the following: When you pray (Name of Prayer), if you had the opportunity to rewrite this prayer in your own words, what would you say to God? Or, any other assigned task.

Create a Wordle for 10 Different Prayers. Then add these graphics to a PowerPoint. As a brief quiz to see who is able to identify the prayer they represent, using a response system like Quizdom (or just plain cell phones and Poll EveryWhere invite the students to identify the prayers that the word clouds represent.

As you become comfortable with “word clouds”, and use this type of activity with your class, remember to come back to this blog post to share your story. Your story is important!

I’m facilitating the Summer Institute for Technology and Ministry this summer in the St. Petersburg Diocese. We’re having a wonderful time learning the culture and language of the ever evolving Digital World that surrounds us.

Just wanted to share a couple of the prayers that we have used in our sessions.

The Technology Canticle

We praise You, Lord, for all Your digital world,

especially for Brother Blog,

who is the gift through whom You give us conversation.

And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor,

of You Most High, he bears your likeness.

We praise You, Lord, for Twitter,

in the heavens you have made the tweet short, quick, and easy.

We praise You, Lord, for Brothers LinkedIn and Flickr,

professional and a sea of networks,

by which You cherish the photos of what you have gifted us with.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Facebook,

filled with family and friends, news, and connections all across the globe.